Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We use data from several nationally representative datasets to estimate the
relationship between church attendance and risky behaviors and whether these
associations vary when one accounts for selective participation. We use various
empirical methods including propensity score matching, sibling and family fixed-effects models, and instrumental variables models that exploit cross-state variation
in blue laws. Our results across the different approaches converge into a general
pattern that youth with higher church attendance are less likely to
commit property or violent crimes, smoke, drink, use drugs, or receive a traffic ticket.